truetech

Well, we have a new addition again. This time, it’s a newborn baby. Born a week ago today, came to us last Wednesday. Good as gold.

Another PodCast – If I Fell, recorded live at Etown Park in August, 2002. It’s in the RSS feed, and here’s a direct link.

Well, let’s see if this works. I’ve enclosed an MP3 of “It Happens All The Time” for this post in the RSS feed.

Tangelo’s really generating interest, apparently.

The Mac OS X version alone has been downloaded over 3,300 times since its release last Tuesday. The bradrhine.com website has received over 135,000 in seven days. I had to upgrade my hosting plan (so please don’t click that link!), but that’s a good problem.

Apple featured Tangelo as a “hot pick” on its Mac OS X Downloads page. That was pretty cool. By far, they’re driving more traffic to us than anyone else. But we’re also getting a lot of traffic from MacNN, MacWorld, and Ranchero Software, because Brent Simmons was cool enough to give us a mention (Tangelo supports the External Weblog Editor API he authored). Brent Simmons is one cool guy.

So version 1.1 is in the works. I’ve added a little feature or two and tweaked some existing ones. Plus I need to do some work on the FTP portion of the setup wizard.

Tomorrow is the big day. Tangelo 1.0 will be released. Hard to believe I’ve been working on it for over a year. I’m relieved that we’re finally getting it out. Dave’s been a huge help with the docs and press release.

Now that 1.0 is done, it’s time to start on some other projects. Next on tap: Frequency 2.5 (new interface), RhinoFont (font viewer/printer), Tangelo 1.1 (bug fixes, probably), Tangelo 1.5 (PodCast support?), and RhinoBugs (working title for my planned bug database).

No wonder I’m always tired.

Oh, by the way, bradrhine.com has been totally redesigned. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Well, looks like we may be switching away from QuickMail Pro at work. I can’t say I’m all broken up about it, although I really have very few complaints about QuickMail; it simply failed to keep pace with the rest of the world. I had high hopes when Outspring bought it, but the past year has given me progressively fewer reasons to hope. I don’t think the Outspring guys had any idea what they were getting themselves into.

We evaluated a lot of email programs, but our requirement of being cross-platform limited the field dramatically. That basically left us with the Outlook/Entourage combo, webmail, something home-grown, or Thunderbird.

1) Outlook/Entourage combo
Entourage is a nice email program on OS X. I don’t particularly care for the changed in the 2004 version, but many people seem to like them. However, Outlook on Windows is a freakin’ virus magnet. Nobody in his or her right mind can deny that. And unless you’re going to run Exchange Server, you don’t get the full benefit. And running Exchange takes a lot more time than I spend managing Communigate Pro. Plus Entourage isn’t a full peer with Outlook, so this choice would marginalize our Mac users, of which I am one. And it’s expensive when you break it down per user.

2) Webmail
Clunky, slow, ugly. On the other hand, amazingly portable. Nothing to install on the local machine. That’s a plus. Of course, they’ll ask us to install it anyway, just like they ask to “install” PowerSchool or Yahoo Calendars. But in the end, most webmail interfaces suck absolutely.

3) Something home-grown.
I gave this serious thought, but reason won out. I may be dumb enough to write a student information system from scratch, but not to write an email client. Especially not the same year I write my own SIS. Yeesh.

4) Thunderbird.
Cross-platform. Nice interface. Integrated RSS reader; that’s a nice bonus. Junk mail filtering… good. LDAP support. Oooooh… auto-complete from LDAP server. Nice. Free. We have a winner.

The excellent LDAP support is the kicker for me. The magic bullet that’s kept QuickMail Pro alive for all these years has been its admittedly innovative address book management. Send each user a copy of the address book as an attachment, and everyone’s local machine is updated. Very nice. It’s a feature our users have come to use almost as a crutch: “I don’t have any address books, so I can’t send any mail.” Apparently they’ve failed, en masse, to crack the secret firstname underscore lastname at etown dot k12 dot pa dor us code. Oy. But since Thunderbird auto-completes recipient addresses directly from the LDAP server, there’s no longer a need to send out address book updates.

That leaves the problem of migrating email archives. I personally have over 20,000 messages archived QuickMail Pro. I’m not willing to start fresh and leave them behind, nor would I ask that of any user. But Thunderbird will only import from Eudora and Netscape Mail. Good luck getting QuickMail data into either of those formats. EmailChemy to the rescue! This nifty Java app converts basically any email format to basically any other. It converted my 20,000+ messages from QuickMail Pro format to Thunderbird format in about 15 minutes. Not bad at all, really.

So I’m on Thunderbird now. I’ll let you know how I make out.

Today I turn 32 years old.

In honor of this momentous occasion, please buy me lots of stuff from my Amazon wish list.

No, I’m just kidding.

Kinda.

Wow, what a day for Mac people!

This had to be one of the best MacWorld Keynotes ever. I’m blown away that the rumor sites were right about the Mini Mac. That’s a lot of Mac for $499. Would I buy one? I don’t know. I kind of promised myself I’d only buy laptops from now on, but that would make a great machine to dedicate to GarageBand.

Which was also updated. The two best features in the new version are multitrack recording (even Jen was excited about that; we can lay down bass and guitar at the same time now) and a built-in tuner. The tuner isn’t much, but sometimes it’s the details that count.

I love the changes to the rest of the iLife suite as well. I’m going to save a bunch of money on Christmas pictures this year. Jen is excited about the changes in iMovie and iDVD. Personally, I’m relieved to finally see iWork. Something to update AppleWorks! I hate Word with a passion, becuase it’s so freakin’ overly helpful. But iWork will open my old AppleWorks docs, and my current Word docs, so I’m happy. And I love that Keynote 2 can read and write Flash. That’s so cool. I’ve been using Keynote 1.1 at church, and it’s nice, but PowerPoint definitely has it beat in some areas. I mostly use Keynote because it does drop shadows on text sooooo much better. Keynote 2 should give PowerPoint more of a run for its money.

The iPod Shuffle is cool, but I wouldn’t buy one personally, at least not at this point. I have a 30GB iPod already, so I don’t really have a need. Now if I didn’t have an iPod, I’d certainly be tempted to get one, just for in the car.

And some surprising news: Bare Bones, the awesome company that they are, has released TextWrangler 2.0. Not only that – they’re giving it away! It’s the return of BBEdit Lite! I just shortened my dock. I had icons on it for SubEthaEdit (for most text editing needs, I like its syntax coloring) and BBEdit Lite (for when I needed heavy duty search and replace). Now I’m back to one, since TextWrangler does both. TextWrangler is a stupid name, but for free, sure, I’ll use it.

Grace had her first visit to the allergist the other day. We were able to see to test results almost immediately, so we know now that Grace is allergic to cats (as am I; this we suspected already) and mold (this was a surprise, but not a shock). She also has mild asthma. So she’s now on an Advair inhaler twice a day and a nasal spray once a day. Plus, she has eye drops, an albuterol inhaler, and Zirtec to be used as needed or in emergencies.

Poor kid was a real trooper when they shot her up with cat, tree, grass, dog, mold, and ragweed. Then they poked her with histamine, and the nurse explained that it was her positive control, which meant amazingly little to Grace. She then explained that she was going to come back and check which ones got red, puffy, or itchy. The “positive control” immediately began to bother Grace, so the nurse pointed out that itching was forbidden. Grace nearly cried at that news.

About twenty minutes later, the nurse returned and said it looked she was allergic to cats and mold. But they needed to run a second test to be sure, so they gave her a few more injections on the other arm. A few tears trickled down Grace’s cheek, she didn’t make any noise, even though the nurse and Jen and I all told her it was OK to cry if it hurt (like the kid in the next room who wouldn’t quit wailing). But Grace was absolutely stoic (a description that’s been used for me recently under very different circumstances).

The second round confirmed it: cats and mold. The cat allergy isn’t severe, nor is mine. Grace gets a runny nose and watery eyes around cats. I get slight congestion in my chest. Nothing serious, but nothing either of us wants to live with. Fortunately (and I mean this on many levels), we don’t have a cat. Even more fortunately, she’s not allergic to dogs in the least. Grace and I were happy to hear that. Jen was strangely disappointed.

These are my most listened-to tracks of 2004, according to my iTunes playcounts. Eclectic blend of modern rock, 80’s stuff, and worship music. Interesting to see that Jars of Clay once again dominates my taste in music. Click the image to get any of these tracks from the iTunes store. Note that even though the Michael Penn song “Slipping My Mind” is listed as being from the album March, that’s only on the re-issue. It was originally on his second album, Free-For-All, but the two albums were combined for the re-issue.

“Jealous Kind”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Trouble Is”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Is She Really Going Out With Him?”, Sugar Ray, Is She Really Going Out With Him? – Single
“Kiss Off”, Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes: Deluxe Edition
“Amazing Grace”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Head Over Heels”, Tears for Fears, Shout: The Very Best of Tears for Fears
“Hound Dog”, Elvis Presley, Elvis
“No Such Thing”, John Mayer, Room for Squares
“Stacy’s Mom”, Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
“Drive”, Incubus, Make Yourself
“Better Is One Day”, Passion Worship Band, One Day Live
“Mad World”, Tears for Fears, Shout: The Very Best of Tears for Fears
“Unchanging”, Chris Tomlin, Not To Us
“Time of the Season”, The Ben Taylor Band, Famous Among the Barns
“I Fought the Law”, Green Day, I Fought the Law – Single
“If I Could Talk I’d Tell You”, The Lemonheads, Car Button Cloth
“Under the Milky Way”, The Church, Starfish
“All I Want Is You”, Jars of Clay, In the Name of Love – Artists United for Africa
“God of Wonders”, Passion, Our Love Is Loud – Live from the Passion Experience Tour
“Lesser Things”, Jars of Clay, Who We Are Instead
“Slipping My Mind”, Michael Penn, Free For All
“Butterflies”, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Fear
“Enough”, Chris Tomlin, Not to Us
“Sad Clown”, Jars Of Clay, If I Left The Zoo
“Wonderful Maker”, Chris Tomlin, Not to Us
“Tom’s Diner”, Suzanne Vega & D.N.A., Retrospective: The Best of Suzanne Vega
“Bright As Yellow”, The Innocence Mission, Glow
“The Munster’s Theme”, Jack Marshall, Ultra Lounge: Tiki Sampler
“Into Your Arms”, The Lemonheads, The Best of The Lemonheads – The Atlantic Years
“Tainted Love (7″ Single)”, Soft Cell, The Very Best of Soft Cell

Happy New Year, everybody!